Welcome to the Nineteenth Century Studies Association website, where we hope you will find information about the Association, its interests and outlets, as well as enticements to join in the many conversations we have on and beyond these pages.

We are an interdisciplinary Association interested in exploring all aspects of the long nineteenth century, from science to music, from architecture to religion, from movement to literatures—and beyond. We hope you will peruse these pages as a volume inviting you to join us at our annual spring meeting, and we ask you to join our community of those with nineteenth century interests.

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Ruth M. McAdams is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Skidmore College, where she studies in nineteenth-century British literature and teaches a broad range of courses in literature and writing. Her book project analyzes connections between Victorian literature and philosophy of history, looking in particularly at the way the Victorians theorize the present in distinction from the recent past of the Regency period or the Napoleonic Wars. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Victorian Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and Pedagogy. In her free time, she plays the oboe and has been getting into swimming.

What was the last experience that made you a stronger scholar-teacher? In the 2016-17 academic year, I taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, and . . .

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Robert D. Aguirre is Professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he also serves as associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is the author ofInformal Empire: Mexico and Central American in Victorian Culture(2005);Mobility and Modernity: Panama in the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Imagination (2017);and many articles on nineteenth-century literature and culture. He is currently working on the expeditionary photography of Eadweard Muybridge.

What was the last experience that made you a stronger scholar-teacher?A reader’s report for my recent book,Mobility and Modernity: Panama in the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Imagination,asked for more analysis of Panamanian writers. This request sent me on a long and deeply satisfying journey into . . .

Voting begins Feb. 19, 2018

All current members of NCSA: please take the time to vote (beginning Monday, Feb 19th) in our elections for Officers and the Board. We provide brief biographies of all candidates and, while the officer positions are uncontested, we really need your input in selecting 1 Board member. The Board oversees the direction and future of our group and we want to see as many disciplines and perspectives represented within our interdisciplinary group—so please take the few minutes to read and vote. We all know voting does indeed matter—and appreciate your input.

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Clayton Tarr teaches at Michigan State University, where he specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature. His book,Gothic Stories within Stories: Frame Narratives and Realism in the Genre, 1790–1900 (2017), suggeststhat theGothic novel took shape as a mode that allowed readers to experience a deep level of reality that was unavailable in the realist novel. In his latest scholarship, Clayton has examined depictions of rape in 1790s novels; argued that long, white, uniform teeth signaled the threat of degeneracy in the mid-nineteenth century; traced the appearances and performances of bog bodies in nineteenth-century literature; analyzed the narrative authority of disabled characters in Victorian novels; and investigated how mid-Victorian children’s literature engages economic metaphors to describe consumerism and the commodity. His new book project, titled “Paper Trails: Registration, Impersonation, Victorian Sensation,” tackles identity theft in the nineteenth century, and focuses on civil registration efforts that made births, deaths, and marriages a responsibility of the state rather than a liability of the church.

What are you doing in the nineteenth-century classroom that incorporates Digital Humanities / New Media scholarship?I am committed to “remix” projects . . .

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Keridiana (Kery) Chez is Assistant Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, where she teaches first year writing, children’s literature, and animals in literature. Her first book,Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men: Affect and Animals in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture(2017),explores how the bourgeoisie on both sides of the Atlantic developed the use of animal companions as emotional prostheses.Particularly, the book is interested in novels by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Margaret Marshall Saunders, Bram Stoker, and Jack London, which participated in producing gender discourses by regulating the degree and manner of intimacy between species. Chez’s other recent projects include essays on the nineteenth-century regulation of animal feed, the gender politics of nineteenth-century pet preferences (cats v. dogs), and the mandrakes in J. K. Rowling’sHarry Potterseries. Her research interests encompass animal studies, gender studies, empire, race/ethnicity studies, technoscience/cyborg studies, utopias and dystopias, and American jurisprudence.

Have you ever had something happen to you professionally that you thought was bad but turned out to be for the best?The academic job market is infamously brutal, and more than once . . .

The NCSA stands united with scholarly and other associations around the world in our commitment to academic freedom and social equality. We confirm our commitment not to discriminate based on age, color, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran and/or marital status.